Although a week has passed since his escape with thousands of other detainees from Abu Zaabal prison, the marquee that the family of Moetassem Al-Qawqa put up to celebrate was still packed with well-wishers from all corners of the Gaza Strip this week. Al-Qawqa himself appeared fatigued from hugging the assembled well-wishers despite his strong physique.

Before his escape from Abu Zaabal, Al-Qawqa served seven years behind bars in Egypt and was considered the longest- serving Palestinian from Gaza in an Egyptian jail. Speaking of his escape, he recalled that after dawn prayers on 30 January he had tried to go back to sleep but no sooner had he got back into bed than he heard gunfire and shouting outside without knowing what was happening.

Within seconds, an Egyptian prisoner opened his cell door and declared that hundreds of Egyptian detainees had attacked the prison and that he would have to leave. Al-Qawqa remembers that he stood stunned for a few moments in disbelief at what he had heard, but then ran out of his cell to find prison guards shooting in the direction of the attacking and fleeing inmates.

The prisoners seemed determined, Al-Qawqa said, and they smashed windows and doors in blocks one and two of the prison. He saw the dead bodies of prisoners on the ground, shot as they were attempting to escape. "I saw at least 10 bodies of inmates, as well as a large number of injured men inside the prison and in the surrounding area," Al-Qawqa told the Weekly.

After Al-Qawqa had escaped from the prison, he fled with another 11 Palestinian prisoners and headed towards the home of one of their relatives in order to get money and supplies. Al-Qawqa said that the escaped inmates discovered from taxi drivers coming from Arish and Sinai that the Egyptian authorities had set up roadblocks on the roads leading to Arish, so they decided to ride in different cars and not go to Sinai at the same time.

Al-Qawqa joined a taxi with four other former inmates heading to Sinai, and, as soon as they had crossed the Suez Canal they got out and asked for help from the local Bedouin on finding desert routes to Arish to avoid the roadblocks.

With the help of the Bedouin, all five escapees were able to reach Arish, which a taxi driver had said did not have security checkpoints on the Egyptian-Palestinian border. Al-Qawqa and the others were able to cross the border through one of the tunnels running under it, since the Egyptian security presence at the time was minimal.

Four other inmates who attempted to cross behind them were arrested by Egyptian security forces. These were Abdullah Abu Reya, who had spent four years in Egyptian prisons, Nidal Abu Reya, who had been jailed for three years, Mohamed Al-Sayed, behind bars for two years, and Ramzi Al-Raie, who was arrested several months ago when heading to Egypt for medical treatment using a Palestinian passport.

Responding to rumours that non-Egyptian elements had been involved in releasing the prisoners, Al-Qawqa replied that "if foreign parties had helped us, our fellow inmates would not have been arrested again. The only reason we are free now is because the Egyptian inmates acted with such bravery."

Al-Qawqa had been sentenced to ten years in prison under Egypt's emergency law for entering the country illegally and being a member of "an Arab terrorist organisation." He said that he and his peers had been treated as if they were terrorists who had come to sabotage Egypt, despite the fact that he had been arrested when he was accompanying a sick relative who had come to Egypt for treatment.

Al-Qawqa said that the Egyptian courts had realised that there were no legal grounds for arresting him, and an order had been made for his release. "An order to release me was issued in 2005, but the prison administrators rigged it," he claimed. "I was released in theory, but then the state security services picked me up again and detained me for several days, issuing another arrest warrant. So, I spent a further five years behind bars even after my release was ordered."

Hossam Wishah, another Palestinian detainee, said that he had been arrested by Egypt's intelligence services. "They tried to force me to confess that I had come to the country to carry out sabotage operations," Wishah said. "I was given a ten-year sentence, of which I served three."

The two escapees said that they had been subjected to torture. Wishah said that members of the Egyptian security services had interrogated them about kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, questions put to all Palestinian detainees.

Ayman Nofal, a leading figure in the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades -- the military wing of Hamas -- in central Gaza, was also able to get home after spending three years in Egyptian prisons. Nofal said that his lawyers had secured seven release orders for him, but that the Egyptian authorities had rejected them, adding that in his view the Egyptian government had used his arrest in order to put pressure on Hamas.

Nofal said that Egyptian interrogators had tried to extract information from him about the resistance in Gaza, especially Hamas, and about its weapons and where they came from. "The interrogators tried to find out the location of the imprisoned Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, how he was arrested, where Hamas could be hiding him and other security information about the resistance in Gaza, and Hamas in particular," Nofal said.

He had been arrested at a roadblock on the Egyptian side of Arish when he and thousands of Gazans had gone there after the separation wall between Egypt and Gaza had come down, he said. Nofal was detained in an Egyptian prison in Arish for nine months.

Sami Shehab, a Hizbullah member accused of carrying out attacks on Egyptian soil, was also able to flee the Al-Natron prison north of Cairo. Lebanese sources have strongly denied claims that a special Hizbullah unit rescued Shehab and others, asserting that they fled the prison on their own.

Some 17,000 Egyptian detainees were able to flee from prisons during the recent unrest, some escaping because prison guards had abandoned their posts.

In another development, the tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip and Egypt began operations in the other direction from usual during the unrest, following an initiative by people in Palestinian Rafah to collect food for their neighbours in Egyptian Rafah on the other side of the border. The initiative came after the unrest in Egypt had led to reduced food supplies in Egyptian Rafah and the surrounding area.

Despite the high prices of food in the Gaza Strip, many traders donated sizeable amounts of food, which was then transported to Egyptian Rafah. Eyewitnesses reported that Palestinian families donated flour they had received as part of UNRWA assistance.

Security forces working for Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh's government also fed Egyptian soldiers on the other side of the Rafah border. Witnesses said that Palestinian security personnel regularly gave Egyptian soldiers meals, and that Palestinian security cars patrolled the border distributing food to Egyptian soldiers.

Haniyeh's government has declared the area near the border with Egypt to be a closed military zone. This has resulted in an almost complete halt in smuggling operations and a crisis in bringing fuel over the border to Gaza from Egypt.

Source: Al Ahram Weekly  Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875